To the Meerkat masses I would offer you a sad violin…but alas all I have is this video courtesy of Periscope’s older sister—Vine:
Note: Vine is experiencing problems but you can see the vine here.
How could Meerkat be overthrown so quickly after outpacing other live stream rivals‽
Blame the non-geek masses consisting of normals.
By Sunday night, the consumer reaction to the Periscope-Meerkat rivalry was brutally lopsided. Twitter’s Periscope app had become a smash hit, breaking into the U.S. iPhone top–30 chart by Friday night. This is a rare feat for a social media app, and it demonstrated that Periscope had immediate and broad consumer appeal. […]
Meerkat’s highest daily ranking on the U.S. iPhone download chart was No. 140, on March 20th. At this point, the app had already generated thousands of news stories and blog posts, most of them enthusiastically describing it as a hit. But actual American consumers never showed the slightest sign of warming up. (via BGR)
Truthfully I prefer Meerkat’s user interface as it allows you to easily see commenters, watchers & re-tweeters, although despite its design Meerkat did fail at the one feature which Periscope perfected—broadcasting.
Periscope is far more stable when it comes to live streaming, & by nailing that one critical feature the team can now focus on building a better UI.